James Holden - Renata

James Holden - Renata
It's been seven years since James Holden's acclaimed debut album, The Idiots Are Winning. Thankfully his new full-length, The Inheritors, is already sounding like a triumph. On "Renata," one of its highlights, Holden's shimmering, homespun synths gradually build in intensity and are joined by crashing live drums and squelching, acidic interference.

Holden is an avowed krautrock aficionado, a DJ who likes to keep his audiences on their toes by dropping some Harmonia, so he was probably salivating over Steve Moore's reinterpretation. The synth guru, who is one half of Pittsburgh space rockers Zombi and a L.I.E.S and Kompakt affiliate, fashions a wonderfully droney track. It rises to a pulsating, emotional highpoint before falling apart magnificently to blasts of wind and a decaying synth note. It may leave you in bits.